Sex Addiction
The readiness with which men – it is usually men
– with money or influence will turn aside from
their business affairs to engage in
extra-curricular dalliances is all too familiar
What we didn't know is that it may
qualify as a medical disorder.
Sex Addicts Anonymous
A host of celebrities have blamed it for their private indiscretions,
but doctors are divided on whether sex addiction really exists
Ah, sex. Our compulsion to reproduce, or to go through the motions of doing so, has a habit of getting people into trouble, especially if they are wealthy or powerful.
The readiness with which men – it is usually men – with money or influence will turn aside from their business affairs to engage in extra-curricular dalliances is all too familiar. What we didn't know, until recently, is that it may qualify as a medical disorder.
Of all those whose sexual proclivities have been exposed down the years, Lord Irvine Laidlaw of Rothiemay surely broke new ground at the weekend with his remarkable apologia for his behaviour.
The wealthy peer, who was born a Scot but lives in Monaco, was alleged in Sunday's News of the World to have flown £3,000-a-night prostitutes from London to take part in orgies in the presidential suite of a hotel in the Mediterranean principality.
The prostitutes are alleged to have drunk champagne and snorted drugs before participating in sex acts with each other and with Lord Laidlaw, 64, in what the paper described as "cocaine fuelled bondage romps".
Once, the married peer would have been dismissed as a dirty old man; an ageing toff indulging in "depraved" activities long past his sell-by date.
Now, however, we are invited to show sympathy for the son of a mill owner with the £760m fortune – because he's now the victim of a "disease".
In a letter to the News of the World, printed alongside the revelations, Lord Laidlaw said he was "deeply sorry" for the embarrassment caused to friends and colleagues.
"I apologise from the bottom of my heart," he said, begging forgiveness from his wife, Christine – whom he said was standing by him – and from the public.
"I have been fighting sex addiction for my whole adult life. Sexual addiction is comparable to the other better known addictions, such as drugs, alcohol and gambling. There is no cure and self-help is rarely successful."
He'd had therapy "a number of times" for the condition but confessed he had not "worked hard enough or continuously enough" at it. He added: "With Christine's support and encouragement I am seeking long-term expert help, not to cure me, but to prevent any relapse into unacceptable behaviours."
The newspaper reported that he was due to check into a sex therapy clinic in South Africa yesterday for a six-week stay and had made a £1m donation to a UK charity to help other victims of the condition.
So should we feel sorry for Lord Laidlaw and applaud his decision to go into rehab? And what of Max Mosley, president of the Fédération Internationale de L'Automobile (FIA), exposed a few weeks ago in the same paper for his somewhat darker sexual tastes, involving sado-masochistic orgies with semi-naked prostitutes in uniform?
What, for that matter, should we think of Russell Brand, motor-mouthed presenter, actor and author with a penchant for nubile blondes and a bed post that has run out of notch space?
He said on the Jonathan Ross show at the weekend that he quite fancied sex with a flamingo – an admission which, coupled with his comments on the opposite page – should guarantee him space on any therapist's couch.
As these topical points of conversation suggest, suddenly, sex addiction is fashionable. Everyone has it, or is at risk of developing it, or wonders if their friends may be afflicted by it – or dreams of meeting someone with it (teenage boys, mostly).
In the context of the nudge, nudge, wink, wink British attitude to sex – uptight, voyeuristic, titillating – it plays to our deepest fears of sex as an overwhelming, destructive force.
Mention the subject and it is certain to induce a knowing laugh, a ribald joke or haughty dismissal.
The idea that sex could rank alongside heroin, alcohol or even gambling as an addiction seems inherently absurd.
Yet therapists are reporting arise in cases as sufferers areincreasingly admitting they have a problem. The publicity given to Lord Laidlaw's antics will undoubtedly fuel that trend.
There is a proliferation of self-help books and websites on the disorder, as well as clinics, many based in America, where for years it has been a celebrity disease, suffered by such local A-listers as Michael Douglas, Woody Harrelson, and Rob Lowe.
But the diagnosis is catching on in Britain. What no one disputes is that an unhealthy obsession with sex damages relationships.
Sally Brampton, Sunday Times agony aunt, says that, despite being shrouded in shame, pain and secrecy, the problem is becoming more common.
"People laugh at sex addiction, but I get increasing numbers of letters about it. Usually they are from women whose boyfriends are hooked on porn. The pain caused to those women, and the shame and guilt those men feel, are not the subjects of comedy."
While attending group therapy meetings with sex addicts, Brampton says she watched a man "cry helplessly as he described masturbating 20 times in one day" and had seen a woman "racked with terrifying shame as she described multiple sexual partners in one evening in a bar". Both sufferers were in relationships.
Brampton's account is backed up by Thaddeus Birchard, a London psychotherapist with a special interest in sex addiction.
There is "increasing evidence" that eating, shopping and gambling can become the subjects of addictive behaviour, just as with drugs and alcohol. Sex is no different, he says:
"These are processes, rather than substances, but they create a release of brain chemicals in the same way. Sex and love trigger the release of chemicals similar to heroin and cocaine. The purpose of the behaviour is to obtain that pay-off."
According to Dr Birchard, sex addiction affects 6 to 8 per cent of the population (the journal Postgraduate Medicine puts the incidence at 3 to 6 per cent) and is 10 times more common in men than women.
It has four defining criteria. First, the obsession with sex feels preoccupying and out of control and is pursued in spite of the harm it causes.
Second, all attempts to curb it fail. Third, it has a psychological function – "generally to anaesthetise something else that is going on in the addict's life". Fourth, it is miserable to be a sex addict.
"We are not talking about happy sex here," Dr Birchard says. "We are talking about something that leaves people feeling pretty wretched and distressed." So is a happy sex addict not an addict?
"I am not distinguishing sex addicts from the highly promiscuous. It is only a problem if it's a problem. If you are happy sleeping around then that's fine," Dr Birchard adds.
And the monogamous sex addict – is that a contradiction in terms? No, says Dr Birchard. "I have had a case of a man who was sex addicted to his wife. It was a problem because it was depersonalising – he turned her into an object rather than treating her as his wife."
However, it is precisely these casual distinctions between happy and unhappy sex addicts that irritate the mainstream addiction lobby – those who deal with the heavy end of heroin and cocaine abuse and see its devastating consequences.
To bracket sex with these all-consuming and life-destroying addictions seems both crass and irresponsible, they say.
Harry Shapiro, director of communications at Drugscope, the charity for drug abusers, says:
"When you are using heroin or cocaine to the point where everything else becomes secondary and your work goes down the pan and your relationships go to pot and life collapses around you – there doesn't seem much comparison [with sex addiction].
"You wonder whether the self-destructive behaviour that is often rooted in childhood problems or mental or emotional poverty, can be transferred across to trying to have sex with as many people as you can stumble across.
"Overindulging a habit doesn't line up with the clinical or even common-sense definition of a genuine addiction. People say they are addicted to watching soaps. Does that qualify? I do have a cynical view of some of this."
As the drug and sex addiction lobbies have become polarised on the issue, mainstream psychiatry has taken up a middle position.
Most psychiatrists acknowledge the existence of a medical problem affecting a very small group of sex-obsessed individuals, but they distinguish this from the much larger question of what makes for satisfying relationships.
Sexuality is inherently variable and there is a danger of people with average sex lives coming to think of themselves as abnormal.
There is a question, too, of where ordinary sexual experimentation shades into selfish or hurtful behaviour and then into compulsive and destructive behaviour.
Evidence suggests that up to half of those with genuine sex addiction were abused as children and up to two thirds have other addictions, to drugs or drink.
Tim Kendall, deputy director of research at the Royal College of Psychiatrists and a consultant practising in Sheffield, says: "There is always a danger with a new psychiatric diagnosis that people think they have a specific problem.
But it is rarely like that. There is a very small number of people who feel compelled to have sex with multiple partners.
It has a lot in common with extreme promiscuity, but it includes an element of degradation – of the people [with whom they are having the sex] or of someone else such as their [regular] partner."
For Dr Kendall, the monogamous sex addict, while unusual, is not unknown. "I had a female patient who had sex six or seven times a day with her husband for a number of years.
That was one of her problems – she also self harmed and drank excessively and took a lot of drugs. Her husband couldn't keep up. When she broke up with him she had a lot of sex with whoever was willing," he says.
But these cases are the exceptions. The danger, according to Dr Kendall, is that medicalising the problem neutralises the debate about promiscuity, as practised by Lord Laidlaw, Max Mosley and Russell Brand.
"This is a moral debate and it is necessary we have it. There are some circumstances in which consenting adults may choose to have multiple partners and that may be an acceptable choice.
But there are many times when that is not the case, because people are behaving abusively or exploiting their position – such as someone in a senior position at work, or they have destructive feelings and seek multiple partners as a way of injuring others."
"Russell Brand says his relationships are fine – but is that really the case? He would be naive not to realise there are power relations involved and that people can get damaged.
Lord Laidlaw is seeking therapy and I would have sympathy with anyone who said they had been overwhelmed [by their desire for sex] and it had done damage and they needed help. But we should not mix that up with the important moral perspective on how we should conduct our relationships."
Almost every sexually active person has at some time indulged in risky behaviour and bears the scars of damaging relationships – though few will have done so on the evidently heroic scale of Laidlaw, Mosley and Brand.
Our fascination with sex addiction reflects our longing for the quick fix, the pill that can solve the moral conundrums thrown up by the complexity of human relationships.
But no such pill exists. For most of us, the psychiatric clinic offers few answers that cannot be found in the debris of our own lives.
